As Nigeria’s future continues to generate very interesting drama, we have just one option left. This option is for all those who want Nigeria preserved.
All who don’t care about preservation of Nigeria have been busy making their views known on how to end this contraption mired in errors because it started in errors and intentional fraud where some would be slaves to others.
Only those who want Nigeria come to an end would insist the nation continues the way it is. Nigeria can never defy the odds among known historical facts and survive all the negatives against it. I have said all my life that I don’t believe in this Nigeria we have today. I am not a fan of this Nigeria either. As a parent, I would not wish my kids inherit this odd place called Nigeria, otherwise I would feel guilty bringing children to this world to be enslaved.
I am an Igbo man and I have been a slave of Nigeria and a slave in Nigeria. I have to admit this fact and I can’t lie to my conscience that Nigeria doesn’t see me as normal citizen just because of where I come from. It has started eating into my psyche, especially since President Muhammadu Buhari came to power and amplified it. It’s so bad that since Buhari has been in power, even outside this country when I meet Nigerians who are not Igbo, and especially the Hausa or Fulani, I never feel the urge to identify with them as my countrymen because I don’t believe they accept me as a Nigerian. This is the most difficult confession of my life as a Nigerian or quasi Nigerian. I have battled it on several occasions outside Nigeria. It pains to say but that is the whole truth.
Do I imply that all Hausa-Fulani are as bad or segregate against the Igbo? Never! There are bad Igbo, Yoruba, Efik, Urhobo, Hausa, Tiv, Fulani everywhere. At the same time, there are very nice and humane ones among all these groups. In fact, the worst of them from all these groups are the politicians and leaders of the country. From wherever, most of them are terrible and belong to the same scion.
So for Nigeria to start affecting people like me that are open-minded, I wonder what the withdrawn must have been going through. I have said and I say it again that I love Nigerians but not Nigeria. By Nigeria, I mean the system. Yes, that system that enslaves some to the benefit of others. I hate it and will ever do. Nobody should expect me to feel happy having children that would inherit slavery their father passed on to them through the foisting of a bad system called Nigeria.
Therefore, Nigeria must restructure because much as some would feel they can go and no qualms about losing old allies in Nigeria, I don’t feel so. There are good Nigerians everywhere that I would not want to lose, and having been born into the identity of a Nigerian, though a slave because I am Igbo, I would prefer that identity is mended to be one I should be proud of.
May I sound this note: All Nigerians who call for restructuring of the country are the real lovers of Nigeria. Those who hate Nigeria boast of their conquest and ask that the system remains the same way. With their position, Nigeria would soon be lost and they won’t benefit from it either.
That is why I hate to listen to all these calls by the 36 governors and the Acting President. Anybody that tells you who the oneness of Nigeria is non-negotiable is a fraud because in the first place Nigeria is not one. And even the most united of nations where all have equal opportunities, there could still arise situations that would warrant negotiating the unity or disunity.
What we do today making such political comments is like holding an inflated balloon under water or making it sink. It can never sink because immediately the hands holding it get weak, the balloon surfaces again.
Meanwhile, most of the people who create the tensions we go through are the same political leaders because beyond power tussle through which the masses are incited to fight each other for the benefit of the power mongers, the ordinary Nigerian doesn’t actually hate each other. The slave I am is politics-induced and therefore the politicians meeting in Abuja can never resolve these problems as they go back to incite more crises which they benefit from. It’s only the continued insistence of the people that would hold back their hands and compel them to act otherwise.
I therefore call on the well meaning Nigerians who believe in the country and know that only a restructured Nigeria would survive to work out a modality which would take the call beyond the streets into the right places where they would be resolved. The wish of the masses always prevails and Nigeria should not prove so docile that the masses can’t champion a cause of change here.
In this season of taking sides, I have read a statement to the Acting President Yemi Osinbajo by elders of the South West, South South and South East calling on the Federal Government to involve all of them in any discussions to resolve the Igbo quit order by Arewa Youths Coalition. They argued that injustice to one southerner, now the South east, is injustice to all south. They called for an inclusive parley that would focus only on restructuring Nigeria.
It is calls like theirs I listen to, and its people that make such calls that love Nigeria. Also last week, the Senate asked the FG to present before it the agreements reached at the 2013 National Confab for deliberation. I join in this clarion call that the task of reshaping Nigeria must happen now. We have the best opportunity to push and accomplish it now to put the tensions to rest. Until that is done, nobody should expect an end to these angers and bitterness because most of the slaves of Nigeria have taken enough and not ready to take any more. Because Nigeria has been interwoven in diverse relationships, no reasonable citizen wants to see anybody’s blood spilled over an issue that would be amicably resolved. We have been together, even in the unequal setting for too long to pretend not to have attachments for each other. We simply do and there should be no bloodshed because a bad system is not worth dying for.
Let us all aggregate our voices and efforts and come up with sponsored bills to the National Assembly to restructure Nigeria. Youths of those parts of Nigeria that believe in the new structure can come together and pull their resources to come up with such bill, take it to the NASS and push for it to be heard and passed into law. Alternatively, the Confab Report should be considered for adoption and give Nigeria a re-jig for progress.
If we sustain the restructure call as street slogan, it will die off and at last nothing comes out of it and that way Nigeria will die. We all know that Nigeria’s is waiting for just one stroke of the cane and it slumps in death because immediately any part of Nigeria pulls out, 50 years after the gang up, nobody is ready for such alliance again.